Lego and McLaren have clearly have a partnership, there have been a couple of Lego versions of their modern F1 Cars as well as their Extreme E car, and the McLaren P1. So it shouldn't surprise that this offical Lego Set exists. I mean this is the most iconic and more successful McLaren F1 car, it is from 1988 and it won 15 of the 16 F1 races that year (it missed out in Italy). The only thing stopping it from being very dull was the the wins were shared between Alain Prost and Aryton Senna, this version is the Aryton Senna version - which won 7 races.
What I find interesting though is that this is the classic livery (not McLaren's previous and current Papaya) it is iconic, but it's iconic because it's the Malboro colours - which is a interesting choice for what is nominally a Toy (although lets face it it's for adults) - As you can see the actual Malboro logo get removed but the red and white is still there so I guess if you know you know.
But let's get to building..
Nice classy box hinting that it's for adults - although they persist with the dumb openings which make it hard to store open the box without ripping it. Interesting that they show the pose of the car on the ground, it's actually built with a stand to put it on, proving once and for all this isn't for playing it's for displaying.
Lots of stickers (although some pieces are printed) and solid rubber tyres are an interesting choice.
Bag 1 and we have little Aryton (who is out of scale with the car, but that's not unusual, and looks, well not much like Aryton but the Helmet is iconic. we have the start of a engine and the floor.
Bag 2 and already it looks like a car, the distinctive read wishbone suspension is there, the sculptured sidepods. the coloured peice, and unfortunately the engine will be covered up
Now we have the front end as well
Front and rear wings are added, just needs some wheels and a engine cover - happily the engine cover is quite removable so you can show off the insides.
The car is done and I have to say it looks really good, it's not really technical at all, there is some steering in the wheels and you can manually adjust the rear wing but that's it - as mentioned this is for display, which brings us to the last bag - the stand
It displays it a slight angle, it also gives us all the info of the car (a big sticker) and give Little Aryton somewhere to stand.
This is the first thing I've built for a while and I have to say I enjoyed it a lot - it wasn't particularly challenging, or time consuming, it was about 2 hours from start to finish (not all in one sitting) and it looks really nice on my shelf.